180 THE BLESSING OF CRAMP-RINGS cure of the same disease. Which custom has persisted even down to our own times, and many even in our own Uf etimes have derived benefit from rings of this kind.] Nicholas Harpsfield, though he did not write tiU the reign of Ehzabeth, was born as early as a.d. 1619, so that his words are consistent with discontinuance of the ceremony after the time of Queen Mary. It remains to consider what diseased states were embraced by the term ' cramp '. EpUepsy, convulsions, and rheumatism cer¬ tainly. AU these terms have in common the idea of muscular contraction or spasm, and their relation in usage to one another may be represented graphically as under : Convulsion \ -n, -1 , Cramp = Rheumatism. Epilepsy /^ ^ . Confusion of these terms is far more marked in medical than in lay vsTiters; but at the same time there is little doubt that the conservative sentiment inspUed by the royal ceremonial kept the term ' cramp' alive in a sense that was all but obsolete in the common diction. Chaucer applies ' crampe' to muscular spasm : But wel he felte about his herte crepe . . . The crampe of death, to streyne him by the herte.^ Linacre, as we have seen, speaks of cramp-rings, in 1618, as a charm against spasms, while about the same year Polydore Vergil speaks of the royal cramp-rings as a cure for the morbus comitialis. Each of these two writers clearly indicates epilepsy. In 1626 Magnus speaks definitely of cramp-rings as relieving a man lying in the falling-sickness, a term habitually applied to epilepsy. Nicho¬ las Harpsfield too, writing in the middle of the reign of Elizabeth, speaks of cramp-rings blessed by the kmgs as remedies for the morbus comitialis. In aU probability royal cramp-rings were used for epilepsy and epilepsy only, but it is quite possible, and I am incUned to think probable, that other cramp-rings had a less exclusive use. Bacon's description of cramp in his Natural and Experimental History is faUly expUcit and obviously does not embrace epUepsy: ' The cramp cometh of contraction of sinews, which is manifest, in that it comes either by cold or dryness.' 1 Troilus, book Ui, 1069.